Recommendations for electrician

[macuu222]

Anyone recommendations for a good reasonably priced licensed electrician to check our breaker box?

[Obie]

Call Helco,they will pull your meter and check the lugs. They will clean up the fuzz and put dielectric grease on the lugs.

This is the most common area for problems and Helco does it for free.

I just saw your post, they will usually pull the meter

[macuu222]

I meant the interior breaker box. They came and checked the entire connection from the pole to the outside box were the line goes into the meter box.

[terracore]

Just curious as to what the problem is? We had ours swapped out by a competent non-electrician Punawebber.

ETA: Just read your other message about what the problem was. You may need an electrician that is also an exorcist.

[macuu222]

One section of the house is losing (fluctuating) power....while other sections are fine. Losing it in the living room /dining room...part of kitchen and bathroom. All downstairs rooms are fine and so is the upstairs bedroom and part of kitchen. Think its an isolated breaker problem. The house is 30 years old and it still has the original breaker box. Called Walter's electric in Hilo. They were the only one that answered my call.

[macuu222]

Hmm... $225.00 for first hour plus parts plus 10 percent plus tax... $100.00 / hr after that...... Hmmm

[Obie]

I don't think those are all on one breaker.Trip all breakers on the circuits that flickering.I bet they are all on one buss bar.

[Durian Fiend]

Easy test of breakers would be to pull one of the flickering ones and swap with a non flickering one. Then you'd isolate the problem to either being the individual breakers or the box.

You can do this yourself, just turn off breaker before pulling wires.

Breakers have a shorter life span than boxes. Box should last a lifetime, but in a tropical climate perhaps not.

[kalakoa]

Stab-type breakers are really easy to replace -- even on a live panel. If you also want to clean the stabs, definitely turn off the main first.

Pull breaker. Unscrew wire. Apply contact grease to new breaker lug and stab. Attach wire to new breaker. Snap in. Open a cold beverage and wonder what the big deal was.

The single MOST IMPORTANT THING is that any replacement breaker be "listed" for the panel. Identical is best. Using an improper breaker can void your fire insurance!

For the vintage, I'm guessing Cutler-Hammer, these have a square tan handle. Some older builds have a weird sort of screw-down breaker that I'm not familiar with -- if all else fails, take the breaker out, tape off the line, and show it to the guys at Alpha. If they don't have a replacement, these guys will: https://www.baybreakers.com/part_need/

I believe every home should include some spare parts. Especially if it was built with a Federal Pacific breaker panel.

[macuu222]

Cancelled Walters Electric in Hilo and called Royal Electric in HPP. We have a Westinghouse breaker box. Arrived first thing in the morning and discovered almost instantly that the problem was 2 loose wires (he wiggled everything around and 2 wires into the breakers fell right off). He tightened everything. Everything back to normal. Took 30 minutes ....$80.00